Matila Ghyka

Matila Ghyka, 1932

Matila Costiesco Ghyka (born September 13, 1881 in Iași , † July 14, 1965 in London ) was a Romanian diplomat , naval officer, lawyer , philosopher , engineer , historian and writer . His first name is sometimes also written Matyla , his last name also Ghika .

biography

He was born in Iași , the former capital of the Republic of Moldova . On his mother's side, he was the great-grandson of Grigore Alexandru Ghica , the last ruling prince of Moldova . Ghyka attended school in Paris and Jersey , then the Naval Academy in Brest . He continued his studies at the École supérieure d'électricité in Paris and at the law faculty of the Université libre de Bruxelles , where he received his doctorate. In 1910 he embarked on a diplomatic career, with stints in Rome , Berlin , London , Madrid , Paris and Stockholm . In 1918 he married Eileen O'Conor, daughter of Nicholas Roderick O'Conor , British Ambassador to Istanbul and Saint Petersburg.

Ghyka's professional stations and travels have taken him around the world. He was known to numerous important personalities and writers, including Paul Morand and Léon-Paul Fargue . In addition to his memoirs entitled Couleur du monde (1955/56), his work also includes a novel ( Pluie d'étoiles , 1933), but above all texts on aesthetics and mathematics, including an investigation into the golden ratio , Le nombre d'or . Rites et rythmes pythagoriciens dans le développement de la civilization occidentale (1931). This work was appreciated by numerous contemporaries, including Paul Valéry , and Salvador Dalí was inspired by Ghyka's explanations for his painting Leda atomica (1949). Le nombre d'or is available in numerous editions and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, English, Czech and Romanian. After World War II, Ghyka left Romania for the USA, where he taught at universities in California and Virginia as a professor of aesthetics. Ghyka died in London, where he was buried next to his wife in Gunnersbury Cemetery . Mircea Eliade wrote the necrology .

Works

• Esthétique des proportions dans la nature et dans les arts (1927)
• Le nombre d'or. Rites et rythmes pythagoriciens dans le développement de la civilization occidentale (1931)
• Pluie d'étoiles (1933)
• Essai sur le rythme (1938)
• Tour d'horizon philosophique (1946)
• Sortilèges du verbe (1949)
• A Documentary Chronology of Roumanian History from Pre-historic Times to the Present Day (1941)
• The Geometry of Art and Life (1946)
• A Practical Handbook of Geometrical Composition and Design (1952)
• Philosophy et mystique du nombre (1952)
• Couleur du monde ( Escales de ma jeunesse (1955), Heureux qui comme Ulysse ... (1956))
• The World Mine Oyster (1961) - English, revised and abridged version of Couleur du monde by the author

literature

• Ilina Gregori: Păstrat în uitare? Matila Ghyka. Numărul şi Verbul . Tracus, Bucharest 2018, ISBN 978-606-664-965-0
• Cornel-Florin Moraru: “Art and Mathematics in Matila Ghyka's Philosophical Aesthetics. A Pythagorean Approach on Contemporary Aesthetics. ”In: Hermeneia 20, 2018; Pp. 42-58.
• Ilina Gregori: "Forgetting and being forgotten in the life and work of Matila C. Ghyka." In: "Forgotten, repressed, disappeared". Abandoned cultures, relationships and orientations in Balkan Romance . Edited by Thede Kahl et al. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2017, pp. 177–196, ISBN 978-3-7329-0255-2 .
• Oliver Götze / Katharina Schillinger: “From pineapple to Zeising. In search of the golden ratio. ”In: Divine Golden Genial. The golden ratio as a global formula? Edited by Lieselotte Kugler u. Oliver Götze, Hirmer, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7774-2689-1 .
• Roxana Patraş: Dematerialization and Form-of-Life in Matila Ghyka's Writings. In: Hermeneia 17, 2016, pp. 253–265.

Web links

• Biography (English) , Prodan Romanian, Cultural Foundation, London